Bringing up Bush

Oliver Stone’s W.is a surprisingly nuanced
look at the character of a president

PONDERING THE POTUS: W.

by MARK SLUTSKY

Despite, or maybe in some way because of his counterculture-obsessed radicalism and flamboyant style, Oliver Stone might be the quintessential American filmmaker. He’s obsessed with his country and the grand forces that shape it: Vietnam. Wall Street. Drugs. 9/11. And in particular, he’s a director particularly obsessed with the presidency. Having made films about and named after both JFK and Richard Nixon, his latest film is W., and as you might guess, it’s about POTUS #43, George Walker Bush, a subject as strange, potent and historically important as anything Stone’s ever taken on before.

An Oliver Stone film about George W. Bush was always going to raise controversy and make some people angry—how could it not? But the surprising thing about W. is that it probably won’t just offend the far right—it’s a far more nuanced film than you’d expect from Stone, and not at all the anti-Bush tirade I’m sure many thought he’d produce.

And that’s sort of the great thing about W.; the anger is implied. It’s assumed that you, as a thinking person, have already made up your mind about the George W. Bush presidency, the catastrophic consequences it’s had for both America and the world abroad, the administration’s unprecedented arrogance and audacity. Bush is almost out of office, and you should really know this stuff already. Stone assumes you don’t need to be spoon-fed anti-Bush talking points; this isn’t a MoveOn.org Web video.

What it is, is a character study of a man that anyone would have to concede is fascinating: a charmer, once the black sheep of an illustrious family, a former boozer and partier converted into a self-righteous crusader whose daddy issues led him to be easily persuaded and subtly bullied by the more domineering, scheming men around him. He comes across likeable at times, but Stone is hardly to blame for that; it would be disingenuous to make a film about Bush that left out his charisma.

W. himself is played by Josh Brolin, who gets that charisma down without caricaturing him; it’s a very vulnerable performance. The film criss-crosses through time between the build-up to the Iraq War and W.’s early, wild days and his ascent to power. The central relationship through the film is with his dad, George H.W. Bush, played by James Cromwell (who else, really could do it?), who sees him as a disappointment almost his entire life—and, in a dream sequence, near the end, Stone implies that W. fears that even his presidency is a let-down to his father.

The supporting cast is pretty perfect too: Thandie Newton disappears into the role of Condoleeza Rice, Jeffrey Wright’s Colin Powell is at the centre of one of the film’s best scenes, in which he’s won over in favour of the war, Richard Dreyfuss brings his best screwface as Dick Cheney, Toby Jones is a sycophantic, froglike Karl Rove.

W. is surprising for what it isn’t, or at least what it doesn’t appear to be: on the surface, it’s not an angry film, not the rant or broad satire you might expect from the famously left-wing Stone. It’s a more interesting film than that, subtle, even, an artful contemplation of this strange man, who history is certainly not done with yet.

W. OPENS THIS FRIDAY, OCT. 17